After a storm, when the tide draws back, it can leave the whole shore covered in starfish — thousands of them, scattered farther than the eye can follow, stranded on the sand under a sun that will not wait.

One morning, an old man walking that beach came upon someone moving slowly along the waterline: bending down, lifting a single starfish, carrying it to the sea, and letting it go, and then bending for the next.

"There are thousands of them," the old man said. "The beach runs for miles. You can't possibly reach them all — what difference does it make?"

The other person, a younger man, bent down, lifted one more, and carried it gently into the water. They watched it settle, right itself, and slip beneath the surface.

"It made all the difference. To that one."

That is what Starfish means to me.

I can't reach everyone living with the weight of a serious illness — the fear that arrives with a diagnosis, the grief, the isolation, the quiet question of who you are now. But the person in front of me, I can reach. I can kneel, and stay, and help carry them back toward the water — back toward their own life, beyond the diagnosis — for as long as it takes, and at whatever pace is theirs.

Because a diagnosis can feel exactly like being pulled out of the life you knew and left on the sand: exposed, and certain that no one sees you. Here, you are seen. You are not one of the thousands. You are the one in front of me — and for this hour, you are the only one I am thinking about.

One person, fully met, is never a small thing.

It is the whole thing.